Energy

State election officials on Friday dismissed a campaign finance complaint that had been lodged against Colorado Rising, the group behind Proposition 112.
In its decision, the elections division of the Colorado Secretary of State’s Office wrote that Colorado Rising did submit an erroneous report about the origins of a $170,000 donation it received in October.
But the agency said the error was “not an intentional falsification of contributor information” but a simple mistake.
“Upon learning of the error, the respondent took immediate steps to correct the information,” the decision reads.
Charles Heatherly, a Republican, filed the complaint in January alleging Colorado Rising incorrectly reported a $170,000 campaign contribution from the Sergey Brin Family Foundation, which was started by Google’s founder.
After first reporting the money as a contribution from the foundation, Colorado Rising later amended its report to say that the money came from ProgressNow Colorado, a political advocacy organization that supports liberal causes.
The complaint said Colorado Rising attempted to obfuscate the source of the funds by filing multiple amended campaign finance reports showing the money coming from a changing list of contributors.
But the elections division said that the Sergey Brin Family Foundation had noted in an Oct. 17 letter to ProgressNow Colorado that its $170,000 contribution was for “general operating support,” making no mention of Prop 112.
In his complaint, Heatherly also claimed that ProgressNow Colorado should have registered as an issue committee because it used the foundation’s money to do campaign work on behalf of Proposition 112, which proposed bigger setbacks for new oil and gas wells.
But election officials said ProgressNow Colorado “did not have a major purpose of supporting or opposing Proposition 112.” “As a result, Respondent (is) not required to register and report as an issue committee under Colorado campaign finance law,” the decision says.

For U.S. shale companies, 2019 will see a boost in production and a decrease in capital spending, according to analysis by Rystad Energy.
After analyzing fourth quarter 2018 earnings reports from 45 U.S. shale operators, Rystad found that, on average, companies planned on 15 percent growth in oil production while cutting capital spending by five percent.
However, oil supermajors ExxonMobil and Chevron plan on spending more this year on the heels of strong 4Q 2018 earnings propelled by Permian production.
“Earnings and guidance confirm that most U.S. shale operators aim to moderate drilling and completion activity this year, prioritizing cost discipline over aggressive growth,” Rystad Energy partner Artem Abramov said in a statement emailed to Rigzone.
Abramov added that an average of five percent growth is based upon just a handful of shale operators anticipating double-digit oil production additions compared to 4Q 2018.
“In fact, a number of shale players estimate a decrease in oil output versus 4Q 2018,” he said.
However, five percent growth for all of 2019 compared to 4Q 2018 would still equal 10 percent growth between 4Q 2018 and 4Q 2019.
“If this growth rate is representative for the entire 9.5 million barrels per day oil output currently achieved in the Lower 48 states excluding Gulf of Mexico, we are then talking about nearly 1 million barrels per day of oil production growth from the U.S.,” said Abramov.

In the first half of 2018 Chinese automakers built 400,000 electric cars, over half the global total and twice as many EVs as the year before.
EVs, the theory goes, could change all of that.
China, which grants certain EV subsidies only to cars with batteries produced domestically, is the world’s largest manufacturer of automotive lithium-ion batteries and home to seven of the 13 biggest battery makers.
It’s easy to imagine Chinese marques pushing their EV capacity onto the global market, and their automobiles flooding the highways of Europe and North America.
One notable example is Volkswagen, which has both stated its intention to essentially abandon efforts to further develop automotive gasoline and diesel engines after 2026, and to turn its focus to electrics.
Other German brands are thinking the same.
Which brings up a major barrier for the Chinese carmakers looking abroad: the brand equity of the established global competition.
“We already know that Chinese consumers often prefer the foreign brand to the domestic brand,” says MacDuffie.
As the focus of value in a given car shifts from gasoline engines to batteries, some of that value will migrate away from the OEMs, who make engines themselves, to third-party battery producers.
What looks more certain is that China will be a major player in a future global car market dominated by EVs, regardless of the success of its automotive brands.

In this age of energy transition with the world moving towards a reduced carbon future, the role of oil and gas companies has come increasingly under the spotlight.
In terms of what the future holds for the industry, Dudley referred heavily to the scenarios from the latest edition of the BP Energy Outlook that was published earlier this month.
If that happens, global energy demand is likely to grow by around a third by 2040.
Nonetheless, that ET scenario also sees carbon emissions rising by around 7% by 2040 – when we know that meeting the goals of the 2015 Paris Agreement requires emissions to fall rapidly.
“And this year’s Energy Outlook goes into both of those themes in some detail.” Preparing for the future While talking about the vagaries of forecasts, Dudley highlighted one that he was confident of making, that we are moving into a future that the industry is already preparing for.
Part of this is future is the Oil and Gas Climate Initiative (OGCI).
“It’s called the Clean Gas Project in Teesside, and the plan is for it to provide a hub for capturing and sequestering multiple sources of carbon emissions.
“We are doing a lot in the industry, and we urge governments to play their part too, as we see from the UK government.
We see the resolution as a good step – one that’s supportive of our progressive approach.” A digital tomorrow One of the priorities for BP making itself fit for the future is digital.
“Ten years ago, digital technology was what we used in the office,” Dudley explained.

(Bloomberg) — Saudi Arabia reaffirmed its interest in the Chinese market with a deal to build a $10 billion refining and petrochemicals complex as it vies for crude-oil customers with fellow OPEC members and Russia.
Saudi Arabian Oil Co., or Aramco, agreed to set up a joint venture with two Chinese companies to develop the facility in Liaoning province, according to a statement Friday.
Saudi Arabia is investing in energy assets across Asia, the world’s biggest oil-consuming region, as it battles for market share.
The kingdom will supply as much as 70 percent of the crude needed by the new complex, which will include a 300,000-barrel-a-day refinery, an ethylene cracker and a paraxylene unit, the statement shows.
The deal, signed while Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman is in Beijing, follows recent Saudi pledges to fund projects in India and Pakistan, as well as agreements to invest in South Korea’s Hyundai Oilbank Co. and a petrochemical complex in Malaysia.
The slew of Asian partnerships formed by state-run Aramco comes as Saudi Arabia plays catch-up with Russia, which has topped the kingdom in oil sales to China in the past couple of years.
The Saudis will team up with China North Industries Group Corp., or Norinco, and Panjin Sincen to form an entity called Huajin Aramco Petrochemical Co., according to Friday’s statement.
By the end of 2019, a “three-party marketing JV” is expected to be formed between the Saudi company, North Huajin and Liaoning Transportation Construction Investment Group Co. to develop a filling-stations network, it said.
An initial framework agreement for the Liaoning refinery was signed during Saudi King Salman bin Abdulaziz’s visit to Beijing in 2017.
On Friday, Aramco said it had now signed memorandums of understanding to expand its downstream presence in Zhejiang, including taking a 9 percent stake in the Zhoushan complex.

(Reuters) – Pioneer Natural Resources Co, one of the largest U.S. shale producers, plans to slow its production growth and spending in 2019, Chief Executive Timothy Dove said on Thursday, even as U.S. output has hit all-time highs.
The Irving, Texas-based company provided the outlook after reporting earnings that fell short of expectations due to losses related to hedging, as oil prices unexpectedly crashed in the fourth quarter of 2018.
Pioneer’s oil and gas production is set to rise 15 percent this year, less than the increase of about 20 percent in the prior two years.
The company produces roughly 181,000 bpd in the Permian, or about 5 percent of the region’s roughly 3.8 million bpd.
The Permian is the nation’s largest shale field.
Capital expenditure is expected to fall by 11 percent, or about $350 million, in the coming year.
Pioneer’s shares were down $4.52, or 3.1 percent, at $141.43.
The stock has lost 34 percent of its value since its 12-month closing high of $212.31 in May 2018.
The company had about an $85 million loss for removing hedges on 2019 production, analysts at Jefferies Group LLC said in a note on Thursday.
Pioneer’s fourth-quarter capital expenditures of $1.03 billion were higher than Wall Street estimates of about $850 million, analysts at Houston investment bank Tudor, Pickering, Holt, & Co said in a note to clients.

The House Judiciary Committee, now led by Democrats, advanced the “No Oil Producing and Exporting Cartels Act” Thursday.
That sets the bipartisan “NOPEC” bill, which would subject the cartel to possible antitrust action by the Department of Justice, up for a possible House vote.
A similar bill targeting OPEC was introduced in the Senate on Thursday.
OPEC’s members “deliberately collude to limit crude oil production as a means of fixing prices, unfairly driving up the price of crude oil,” House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerrold Nadler said before voting in favor of the legislation.
Various iterations of the bill have been proposed in the past, and former presidents have threatened to use their veto power to scupper the legislation.
But President Donald Trump could be more amenable, given his frequent twitter attacks accusing the group of keeping oil prices artificially high.
“I’m not going to predict it will get passed and enacted into law, but I think its prospects are pretty good,” said Seth Bloom, former general counsel of the Senate Antitrust Subcommittee.
“OPEC doesn’t have too many friends right now and the legislation may likely have a friend in the White House given Trump has written favorably about it in the past.”
“If OPEC members conducted the same manipulation in the United States that they practice in Vienna, they could be prosecuted,” said Robbie Diamond, who heads up Securing America’s Future Energy.
All comments are subject to editorial review.

Despite recent low crude prices and a significant drop in the DrillingInfo rig count during January, the giant Permian Basin of West Texas and Southeast New Mexico continues to expand its role as the main driver of energy growth in North America.
In just the past week, we have seen the following significant events that are attributable all or in part to what has become the world’s second most-productive oil and gas resource: A driver of upstream and midstream profits – Both ExxonMobil and Chevron beat analyst expectations with their 4th quarter earnings announcements, driven mostly by their upstream and midstream developments in the Permian.
Driven by its Permian drilling, Chevron’s oil and natural gas production rose to an all-time high as the company produced a record 3 million barrels of oil per day (bopd) during the 4th quarter.
A driver of downstream expansion and acquisitions – Early last week, Exxon also broke ground on a major expansion of its Beaumont refinery, a project that will add the capability of processing an additional 250,000 bopd and make it the largest refinery in the country.
This purchase gives Chevron an additional 110,000 bopd of capacity to refine its own light sweet crude.
A driver of record domestic production – In its new Annual Energy Outlook released on January 24, the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) now projects in its reference case that domestic crude oil production will rise to more than 15 million bopd by 2022, years before previous projections, and will remain above 14 million bopd through the year 2040.
This basin includes many prolific tight oil plays with multiple layers, including the Bone Spring, Spraberry, and Wolfcamp, making it one of the lower-cost areas to develop.”
Meanwhile, the EIA’s “High Resource and Technology” case projects U.S. domestic production to grow to an even more impressive 20 million bopd by the year 2040.
This month, the EIA projects that the Permian Basin alone will put that much crude onto the market.
Amazing.

The proposed well site is near the Thistlethwaite Wildlife Management Area.
The injection well will be designed to dispose of chemicals and water used in fracking.
No one from Eagle Oil attended the meeting.
Attempts to reach the company Friday morning were unsuccessful. “It’s a beautiful community that will never be the same if this gets approved.
It will destroy our community,” said St. Landry Parish President Bill Fontenot. “I’m respectfully representing this community and I’m pretty sure there’s no one here that’s inviting this project.
Many said an approval would make the area the “dumping ground of St. Landry Parish.”
The Office of Conservation, he noted, should visit the site, which includes a nearby pipeline.
Other concerns from residents included making it harder for farmers to grow crops and get them to market, safety for children who live along the highways and worries of contamination of the nearby St. Landry Solid Waste landfill.

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